


Man's Best Friend

by FghtInUs



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Established Relationship, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Grumpy Bucky Barnes, M/M, Magic, also minor swearing, but only kind of, like that's it that's the plot, nobody asked for this and yet here we are, non-sexual nudity (brief), steve rogers is a personified dog, this is the tacobell of fanfictions, turning into a dog-person really took All of Steve's braincells
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:33:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27661406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FghtInUs/pseuds/FghtInUs
Summary: A series of vignettes following Steve's unfortunate encounter with a wizard.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25





	Man's Best Friend

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nuhre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nuhre/gifts).



> Shout out to nuhre, wonderful little weasel that she is, for encouraging me!!  
> If you feel like it, kudos & comments are greatly appreciated <3

"Stop moving," Bucky gripes from behind Steve, planting his hands on Steve's hips to still him.

Steve throws a disparaging look over his shoulder. "I don't want to wear pants."

Bucky shushes him as he makes marks on the back of Steve's pants.

"It hurts," Steve grumbles, and if he had dog ears, too, they'd be pinned to his head.

"I'll just punch a hole out and it won't hurt anymore. Alright?"

"If I didn't have to wear _pants_ -"

"Non-negotiable, pal."

It strikes Bucky that he might be sending mixed messages when he says, "Okay. Take off your pants."

Steve sheds his boxers along with his sweats and Bucky has to use every muscle in his being to suppress a groan.

"You can't just walk around without underwear on. We have neighbors."

Steve throws back his head and an inhuman whine erupts from him, making Bucky's eyes bounce around in his skull.

Bucky puts his hands over his face. "You have to wear them."

Steve pouts but picks up his underwear anyway.

Bucky retrieves Steve's sweats from where they lie discarded on the ground. He takes them to the kitchen and works on carefully ripping the stitches in the right spot, big enough for Steve's fluffy blond tail to fit through, but in such a way that he might be able to sew them back up once Steve's returned to his normal, mostly-human form.

Boy, he hopes that's soon.

"Hey, Steve," Bucky calls as he emerges back into the living room only to find Steve trying to rip a hole in his boxers with his bare hands. "No, wait-" Bucky says, but he's too late.

The fabric rips right down the middle, transforming the garment into something closely resembling assless chaps.

Steve stares down at the ruined thing in his hands like he can't comprehend what happened.

Steve looks at Bucky like he might be able to make better sense of the situation.

"That doesn't mean you don't have to wear underwear."

-

“Bucky, I’m bored. Play with me. I’m bored. Bucky. You’re not even listening. Bucky. Bucky,” Steve, the human dog, calls, and Bucky wishes death upon Stephen Strange who can’t figure out a cure to Steve’s dogism fast enough.

“Here.”

Bucky slaps down a dog puzzle feeder and pours cheerios into it. The lines are too thin for Steve to get more than one finger into at a time, so he has to push each individual piece out of the opening to the puzzle.

For an embarrassingly long amount of time, Steve laser-focuses onto the cereal, eagerly eating each little o he’s earned.

A piece gets stuck, and Bucky watches, both amused and bewildered at the same time, as Steve struggles to free it from the confines of the puzzle walls. It never occurs to Steve to flip the contraption over, or shake it. The puzzle remains firmly on the table, Steve using one finger to try to finagle the cereal. Eventually, he huffs a forlorn sigh, looks at Bucky with his wide, sad eyes and lets out a high pitched whine that does less to soften Bucky than it does to irritate him.

“Jesus christ, stop making that noise,” Bucky groans, freeing the cheerio for Steve and giving him the puzzle back.

Steve does a happy dance in his seat, beaming at Bucky. His tail, stuck between the rungs on the back of the chair, makes rhythmic thumping noises.

“Thank you!”

For as annoying as this curse is, Bucky hasn’t heard Steve this happy in 70 years.

It can’t be all bad if it makes Steve smile like that.

-

After Steve wakes Bucky up in the morning by sitting outside his bedroom door and making those eerily realistic dog cries, Bucky doesn’t think he deserves to go on a run. That would be a reward and Bucky is firmly in the camp of _not_ wanting to encourage Steve any further because Steve already thinks he’s cute and that’s causing many problems for Bucky.

Another problem is that if he _doesn’t_ take Steve for a run, one of two things will happen.

Either Steve will absolutely destroy the apartment, or Bucky will kill him. Maybe both.

“Try getting him a toy,” Sam had suggested between laughing fits. Bucky hung up on him.

He’s starting to think maybe that isn’t the worst idea.

“You wanna go for a run?”

Steve is up and shoving on his shoes before Bucky’s even finished the sentence.

-

Bucky is running at his normal pace and Steve is running at the pace of a dog on fucking cocaine. Steve runs ahead of Bucky, blabbering on about how everything is so pretty in color. He’s had full color vision ever since the serum but he’s never been so vocal about it before.

Of course, he can’t keep himself entertained for long, so when he gets too far ahead, he circles back to jog next to Bucky before inevitably saying, “You’re going so slow,” and running ahead again.

Bucky hasn’t even told Steve where they’re going and yet Steve prances around like they’re going to an art museum, all jittery and excited.

Bucky believes he should get an award of some sort for dealing with this shit. After the first 24 hours, he’d texted Natasha, asking her to dogsit and she told him, quote, “lmao no.” and left it at that.

He’d asked Sam, who also refused, because Sam has, quote, “a real job” and does not “get paid enough for anything even close to that.”

-

Steve picks at the jacket Bucky forced him to wear to cover up his tail, rolling the lint between his fingers and pouting.

“C’mon, pal. Pick something out.”

Steve shuffles his feet and doesn’t look up from the ground.

Bucky picks up a hamburger toy and squeaks it. The noise makes Steve’s head snap up and the suspicious lump in the back of his jacket wiggle. He seems to realize that’s what Bucky was aiming for because he visibly restrains himself.

“No?” Bucky sets down the hamburger. “Alright. What about,” Bucky scans the shelves, dragging the word out, before grabbing a rope toy, “this?” He shakes the toy. Steve’s eyes track the movement but he doesn’t stop sulking.

“Okay,” Bucky says in a placating voice, setting the toy down. He picks up a cloth frisbee, Steve perking up in his peripheral, and turns it over and over in his hands. Steve gets closer to him, eyes fixated on the frisbee.

“What?” Bucky asks, feigning ignorance. “Oh, this? You want this?”

Steve’s eagerness is bald on his face. If the percentage of dog in him were any higher, he’d be drooling.

Bucky throws the frisbee, which is objectively impolite and he really feels it when an employee glares at him down the aisle as Steve barrels past, desperate to catch the frisbee.

-

Steve is sprawled out on the couch, sighing in louder increments.

Bucky is in the kitchen, making dinner and pointedly ignoring him. Eventually, the sighing dies down, and is replaced with a truly pathetic squeaking noise as Steve squishes the squeaky toy with his hands.

“Good boy,” Bucky says sarcastically and in response, Steve’s tail thumps contently against the couch cushions.

-

“Stop that,” Bucky says as Steve steals another piece of french toast from his plate. “You have your own plate right there.”

“But yours is better.”

“It’s the same.”

Steve looks down dejectedly at his own french toast. Bucky sighs, taking the food from Steve’s plate and placing it on his own.

“There, now it’s all mine. Want some?”

-

“Can I have some?”

“You’re not gonna like it,” Bucky warns, handing Steve a broken off chunk of sushi.

Steve isn’t shaken, taking the piece and throwing the whole thing in his mouth. He barely chews before he swallows.

“Gross,” Steve announces.

“I told you.” Bucky goes back to eating in an attempt at peace. One wonderful mouthful later and Steve is insistently tapping on his arm.

“What?”

“Can I have some?” Bucky looks to the ceiling.

“I’m eating the same thing. You didn’t like it.”

“C’mon, Buck, please?”

“Go get something from the kitchen.”

Steve throws his head back like he always does right before he emits that ear-splitting whine of his. Bucky scrambles to smack a hand over his mouth.

“What? What do you want? Are you hungry?”

“No,” Steve says, muffled from under Bucky’s palm.

“But you want my food.”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s you.”

“What?”

“You’re eating, and you’re happy. I wanted to be included.”

Puppy Steve is so much more honest than normal Steve. Bucky can’t say he hates it, though he could do without the whining.

-

“Bucky, Bucky, Bucky,” Steve chants, excited wriggling taking over his body.

“What?” Bucky responds, not looking up from his book.

Steve runs over, knocking the book from Bucky’s hands in excitement. “It’s snowing!” he howls.

“How can you be so excited about everything?”

“Look at it, Buck! Look!”

“I see it.”

“Let’s go,” Steve says, running out the apartment door without another word.

Bucky stares after him in bewilderment. The door is gently swinging on its hooks. After about thirty seconds, the sound of Steve romping back through the hallway hit Bucky’s ears. He bursts back through the door and it flies open, hitting the door jamb with a loud crash.

Steve doesn’t seem to mind the destruction left in his wake. “Are you coming?”

“You’ve seen snow before.”

“Must chase,” Steve says emphatically before bolting back down the stairs.

Faintly, Bucky can hear Steve whooping and hollering from the yard.

-

“Alright,” Stark says, clapping his hands together. “Time to get Spot down to the lab.”

“Strange figured something out?” Bucky asks, trying to keep the eagerness out of his voice and utterly failing.

“Yup. Something, something, full moon, something, magic, something. I didn’t do the reading.”

“Okay. Give me a second and I’ll round him up.”

“Nah, I got it.”

“He only really responds to me.”

Stark blows a raspberry at him.

“Steve?” Stark calls, but Steve, who is sitting at the table with his food puzzle, doesn't seem to hear it because there is no response. The apartment might as well be empty.

Bucky raises an eyebrow in a, “I told you,” gesture. “Hey, Stevie?”

Steve’s head snaps up, searching the room for Bucky. As soon as he’s spotted, Steve’s face lights up and he launches himself out of his chair so fast that it teeters on its back legs for a few seconds before thunking back onto all fours.

-

In the lab, Steve growls at Dr. Strange for no reason that Bucky can deduce.

“Maybe it’s your facial hair,” Stark suggests.

Strange doesn’t seem to appreciate the insight.

Steve can’t comfortably sit in a chair with a solid back, so Strange has him sit on the ground.

“Are you ready, Mr. Rogers?”

Steve looks at Bucky, who nods in encouragement.

“Yes,” Steve says, though he still sounds a little unsure.

“You know,” Stark says, wiping a pretend tear from his eye, “I’m gonna miss the little guy.”

Behind Bucky’s glare is the nagging feeling that, yeah.

He might miss puppy-Steve a little bit, too.

But only a little bit.


End file.
